4 Signs Your Website Design is Ahead of Your Customers

There is much more to a good website design than looking cool. Having a great website design is awesome, but what if it’s too complicated or “sophisticated” for your clients and potential customers? When choosing a new website design, remember that function is just as important as the layout. Here are four signs that your website is just not working for your consumer base:

Website Does Not Cater To Your Target Audience

Audience segmentation is an integral building block in a marketing plan. This is the process of dividing customers up into subgroups based on criteria such as: demographics, geographics, social behaviors and psychographics. This requires a business to think about customers in relation to what products/servces are being sold. Basically a website shouldn’t aim to be like Tesla if you’re selling a ‘smart car’, and vice versa.

This is difficult because sometimes, owners want their website to convey a feeling of something they like or find aesthetically pleasing. In real life, this may not translate so well for business. The bottom line is to again to design a website according to how customers would want it to be, not just based on personal likes.

Hard to Navigate

High brow design is not always the right option. Choosing unconventional navigation may seem unique and “out of the box” but there are reasons why the layout for website navigation are standardized – customers are used to seeing things in (or around) the same area across the websites they navigate. This means a Home button on the left or top and contact on the top or right. Scrolling options are usually found on the right hand side. Even though it may seem intuitive, don’t overlook a sleek design as your regular customers may not understand or be able to find what they’re looking for.

For example, Contact buttons and pages should be easy to find and have a call to action. Depending on your business and customers, having an icon of a phone may not easily convey “contact” or “call” and having a small button with lines is not enough to convey “menu” or “more options”.

Slow Loading

Don’t expect potential customers to have super fast internet or a super big monitor. Having complicated elements might be ahead of your main target audience, as well as what their equipment can handle. Websites that are image and Flash heavy look good, once the site is fully loaded. But on slow wifi or cell phone internet, this doesn’t fare well for a website. Customers don’t have time for a website to load, or for even portions of a website to load. Contact forms or other important parts of a website may be loading on Javascript, which if is slow loading will also deter customers. Every little thing counts when it comes to web page speed, even if it’s smaller things that you wouldn’t normally think of. Also, don’t forget how we recently discussed Google identifying Mobile-Friendly websites.

Website Is Not Converting

Is your website just sitting pretty? After a quick check that all the contact forms and web pages are working correctly, the next step is to think of why conversions aren’t taking place. There are many reasons why customers aren’t making contact. Besides the ones mentioned above, tere are a few more to consider:

1) Your website doesn’t display what is promised
2) Users are given too little/much information and want to go elsewhere
3) There are no strong calls to action
4) Users feel like your products/services are too cheap/expensive

If you haven’t already guessed, these are issues that can be dealt with in the design and structure of a website. Getting a potential customer to a website is the job for an SEO but what happens afterwards is just as crucial. Have questions about a new website design or help with one that isn’t working? Don’t hesitate to call Emarketed at 800-WEB-5421 today.